Opus They – Reflections II (Language) 
by Dr Michael Quinton

Language influences perception, or as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests language determines thought (Beeman, 2012). It shapes how humans perceive the world, how they categorise and relate to things based on memory that is shaped by linguistic associations. Through language people are able to express inner thoughts, desires, emotions and ideas, as it acts as an interface that externalises their inner worlds. 

In-depth studies of linguistic diversity suggest that the language people speak shapes their experience and their cognition of the world. The Australian Aboriginal ‘Guugu Yimithirr’ people use the cardinal directions of ‘north, south, east and west’ to determine their locations instead of using ‘Left’ and ‘Right’. This gives them a different experience of spatial orientation which is more relatable to the Earth and probably even to the Sun (Haviland, 1998; Maden, 2019). 

A word possesses powerful meaning which gives animation, significance and dimensionality to an object, creature or subject. It stamps an associative symbolism to the form which can be recalled, memorised and reanimated in the human mind. A word usually carries with it a multiplicity of facets which give the form a broader context. A person who has a certain degree of mastery of a language can use metaphor and play around with the meaning of words in accordance with context. 

Barfield on Language as a Historical Indicator of the Mutation of Human Consciousness

The meaning of words varies over time according to their contextual application (Barfield, 1967). There are mutations that take place that give an indication of shifts in human consciousness. Barfield believed that when considering words historically they contain within them a record of mutations in human consciousness. He suggests that words are able to expand in meaning which means that they have a more embracing quality, but they can also contract in meaning. 

Barfield had identified that contraction was the dominant aspect where words became confined in meaning in order to delineate accuracy. More expanded words have a more voluminous expression which are inflated by imagination. An example is given of how the words ‘spirit’, ‘wind’ and ‘breath’ were all principles that emerged from the Greek word ‘Pneuma’ which meant ‘that which is breathed out or blown’ (Oxford, 2025). When language is poetic, it is usually more expansive and requires strong, inner or imaginative activity. Contracted words are used in a more familiar and mundane context from a more habitual framework (Barfield, 1967). 

Barfield argues that perception without imagination is the severance between spirit and matter and that through the strengthening of the imagination it is possible to repair the damage brought about by Descartes ‘Cartesian Dualism’, a split of mind from the body, distinct and independent from one another (Barfield, 2006). 

Revisiting Goethe’s Four Steps for the Development of New Sense Organs - Integration

This integration of imagination into perception mirrors Goethe’s four steps to enable the development of new sensory organs that were described in Reflection 1 (Brook, 2005). Goethe considers one of the crucial steps out of the four (step 2) to render use of the imagination to be able to experience the inner qualities of the form that is being experienced by the observer. It is to ‘Exact the Sensorial Fantasy’ to be able to perceive the form in its passage through time. 

In the previous step of ‘Exacting the Sense Perception’, the observer is asked to not let any preconceptions contaminate the form that is being experienced. In this step, Goethe is asking the observer to restrain themselves from terminology or names, tags, definitions. It is asking the observer to go beyond language to be able to experience the form in its true essence. 

This suggests that though language is a powerful aspect through which the external world can be experienced and formed within human consciousness, it also contaminates the external world through definitions. Words can set boundaries and fix things in time. A word or a name will immediately evoke past impressions, experiences and thoughts, which will automatically be overlaid onto reality. This limits human interactions and creates a division where the observer interacts with a past phantom rather than interacting with the form that presents itself to them. 

This acts as a temporal rift where past recollection supersedes present projection, and this compromises any true experience of the form. In human interactions a lot of it stops at this superficial stage and there is no penetration to the deeper levels of conscious interaction. 

There would need to be an integration of the two different forms of perceiving where the conceptualisation that comes from language becomes the vehicle that expresses the form in its totality, and this is where Goethe’s third and fourth steps become essential. In the third step the observer must become an open receptacle that allows the form to resonate within them and to utter their Logos to them. Then in the fourth step, the observer, who has absorbed the form in its totality is able to express it through consciousness. 

Deep Listening – Connection, Intimacy and Self Surrender

This is where the practice of ‘deep listening’ becomes a method for this kind of communion. Deep listening does not only imply that one listens with one’s ears, but that the listener experiences the form in its totally and with all one’s being. Oliveros (2005) suggests a method of deep listening that explores the differences between involuntary or automatic listening and conscious listening where the listener consciously immerses themselves into the moment, opening themselves up and giving themselves to the creature, object or subject that they are perceiving. In consciously engaging in this form of active listening, the perceiver does not only listen with the ears but also with the body. Their being becomes a sound board that allows the outer world to resonate and manifest within them. The listener is encouraged to interact with this level of depth perception with their own thoughts, imagination, dreams and creative impetus whereby giving themselves in such a way to their internal processes that they replicate the same form of attention when interacting with the outside world. 

Similar practices are described by spiritual teachers like Krishnamurti who describes how essential it is to truly listen in completeness, with full attention and without the allowing of pre-thought or biases to contaminate what is being said. In his third volume of Commentaries on Living (Krishnamurti, 1968) he states the following: 

“We never look, but through a screen of words, explanations and prejudices; we never listen save through judgments, comparisons and remembrances. The very naming of the flower, or the bird, is a distraction. The mind is never still to look, to listen. The moment it looks, it is off on its restless wanderings; in the very act of listening there is an interpretation, a recollection, an enjoyment, and attention is denied. The mind may be absorbed by the thing it sees or listens to, as a child is by a toy, but this is not attention. Nor is concentration attention, for concentration is the way of exclusion and resistance. There is attention only when the mind is not absorbed by an inward or outward idea or object. Attention is the complete good.” 

There is something else that emerges from all this, especially in relation to language and to listening. Through quiet observation one can become aware of the inner narrative that goes on in their minds. People talk to themselves internally. They use their preferred language of communication to have these inner discourses with themselves. 

Inner Dialogue as a Double-Edged Sword

Vygotsky (1934/1987) suggests that inner dialogue is a crucial element in developing reasoning, planning, memory and helps to construct identity. It serves as a structure for higher-order thinking. There is, however, a limitation since inner dialogue can limit perception due to the mental labelling that takes place through the use of language, naming and tagging. Words can impoverish interactions as they superimpose concepts which cast shadows and limitations upon the creature, object or subject that is being perceived especially since words have become cognitive and functional, and where imagination and poetry are lacking to describe the more complex Logos of the form being perceived. This suggests that language might have to go beyond mere descriptive, constricted functionality to be able to express multilayered complexity, which emanates from forms, which are an amalgam of various structures and layers that complete the form, not just as a physical entity, but a holographic projection. 

The power of association from words or names, categorises, organises and sets apart, when the mind seeks to dissect and place things in boxes. In Lewis Carroll’s (1984) novel ‘Through the Looking Glass’ Chapter 3 there is an episode where Alice encounters a fawn as she enters the woods, but she has forgotten what to call the woods and cannot even remember her own name. She cannot seem to remember what the animal that she is interacting with is called. The fawn is also unable to recognise that Alice is human, and they realise that they have to walk a little further to be able to remember who they are, so they decide to walk together as Alice lovingly held the fawn within her arms. Upon reaching the edge of the woods, the fawn suddenly dashed away as it realised that it was a fawn and that Alice was a human child, the human being a threat to the fawn. 

The Dissipation of Language and Meaning – The Sound Bite 

In this day and age when sound bites and headlines have become the new harbingers of information people are experiencing abbreviated language, sugar coated sensationalism and watered down and poorly represented complexities which have been reduced to mere sentences which contain flat meaning. 

There is also the dopamine addiction that comes with social media, instant gratification, cognitive overload and endless seas of information, misinformation, disinformation and other forms of attention seeking formations which rapidly degrade the human capacity for empathy, stillness, attention, purpose, truth and the appreciation of the simplistic.

These guilty pleasures have led current structures towards dizzying heights of uncertainty where the vertigo of not knowing is taking its toll and cracking the foundations that hold up the strongholds of our social structures. Gebser (1986) described this process in the previous century and the symptoms that we are currently witnessing, as the cracking and dissolution of the ‘Perspectival Consciousness Structure’ and this maelstrom of confusion is now strongly suggesting that we start forming new structures built on the foundations of a new paradigm. 

The Forming of a new Mythos and Poetry

In a time of sound bites we must start forming remedial measures to counter the devastating effects of these lifeless words. Meaning, not cognitive meaning but deep inner meaning is required. Maybe Goethe was right when he suggested that we would need to develop ‘new organs of perception’ to experience the higher realms and maybe we should take a leaf from his book to start evolving these new systems which seek to experience life and the world from a deep intimate perspective. 

From a deeper level of absorption where profound levels of intimacy could be formed between human beings and the world around them, it would suggest that a new mythos would need to be realised, one that realises new archetypal forms that allow for the integrative and symbiotic intimacy that is required for the human being to experience the outer world within oneself and for the outer world to experience the inner domain of the human being. 

The new Mythos would need to seek ways how to integrate technology, not as a replacement for the human body, but as an extension and a symbiont of the human being. The new mythology would need to be ecological in a way that truly reflects the interrelationship between humanity and nature. It would need to be cosmic as it realises that the cosmos is interwoven into the very fabric of our being. It would need to be quantum as we start to integrate the holographic characteristics which are reflected in the base fundamentals as the building blocks of the visible universe and the pervading and motivating force that moves all things. 

Our language would have to integrate the imaginative and the poetic to express the inner Logos of things as they resonate within the core of our beings and be able to express these archetypal qualities in language and form. 

The creation of the new sense organs is to enhance our current sense organs, not by replacing them with cybernetic components, but to understand the resonant field from which a deep sensing emerges. All the physical senses are sensors that interpret the electromagnetic field in various ways, but since the electromagnetic field is all-pervading in our system then we can probably sense things beyond the limit of our senses. People are already experimenting with ‘Dermo-optical perception’, where they can see things when blindfolded with their minds eye (Vernon and Sheldrake, 2025). 

Through the enhancement of the senses, our sense of Space and time fuse and expand allowing us to bend physical reality and to move through it differently. The idea of warp drives, wormholes and moving faster than the speed of light in relation to space travel have become new frontiers in scientific research. 

Multifaceted meaning – A Shift from Binary Thinking

Meaning and understanding must move away from the limits of binary, dualistic thinking and become more integral to be able to navigate through the complexity and multifaceted nature of life. In this prevailing, current mode of thinking humanity can only experience the Earth as a flat, inanimate, rock, and in doing so will only lead to its destruction since the current human mentality is somewhat indifferent in realising its intimate connection to the Earth. 

Multilayered resonance of understanding has to become the new paradigm, and this is achieved not through the accumulation of data, but the deeper and more intimate realisation of things that can result from openness, fearlessness and embracing uncertainty. It requires that one learns how to trust one’s inner intuition and to allow it to navigate them through the darkness of not-knowing. To do this one must allow themselves to stumble, to fall and to pick themselves up, and to learn how to gauge their inner strengths and qualities. 

This is especially important as humanity wades through vast deep oceans of information where truth has become so diluted that one must find one’s bearings by trusting their inner compass. It is no longer a time to allow authorities to show humanity the way. These institutions are all in turmoil themselves, so rife with confusion and overload. The undertaking of becoming one who can read the signs suggests the template for the New Mythos where the candidate embarks on a path of self-discovery, not as an isolated phenomenon but as a vessel where the inner and outer worlds of the candidate can be fused into a new perception. 

The New Mythos and New Language 

The practice of deep listening, and the role of the human being as becoming a soundboard for the resonances of nature to be uttered through them, is a deep implication which could have a radical transformative effect on human consciousness. 

The perceiver who is deeply and intimately able to experience the world within their own depths becomes the New Mythmaker, the Poet. As a witness to these inner resonances, and as a direct perceiver who is able to experience the outer world within their core, they experience inner synthesis of perception which integrates the resonances of the form at its base, archetypal expression, and is able to convey this with a new felt ritual language. 

This language which utters the inner form in its purist representation becomes shared cultural syntax. Culture then feeds this back into the field of perception which alters human consciousness and allows future generations to resonate with this new form of expression from an ingrained deeper awareness. 

The new mythos and poetry must arise from the integration of direct and conceptual perception. Without that synthesis, myth collapses into superstition, and poetry into wordplay.

Neo-Lingual Characteristics 

Through this level of depth and inquiry into the nature of a creature or objects essence, a language of presence is needed which would require a slower pace of living to allow for deeper tuning. This kind of intimacy would originate an ecological relationship to develop where if one was to utter the true name of a river then one would have to relate to it as kin and not as a resource. For this to occur a level of ‘Inner Coherence’ where language would be aligned to the deeper source of the form that one is interacting with. 

In such an instance the divide between speech and being dissolves and true inner speech and can be invoked from the centre of ones being. This direct attuning with the form allows the inner expression of it to be revealed and so its secrets are no longer hid but are revealed, allowing the perceiver to interact with it in a new way. 

References 

Beeman, W. O. (2012). Linguistics and anthropology. The Philosophy of Linguistics. Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, Pages 531-551,Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-51747-0.50016-0

Haviland, J. B. (1998). Guugu Yimithirr cardinal directions. Ethos, 26(1), 25-47. 

Maden, J. (2019), How the Languages We Speak Shape Our Realities, March 2019, Philosophy Break 2025. Accessed July 2025 from: https://philosophybreak.com/articles/language-shapes-reality/ 

Barfield, O (1967). Speaker’s Meaning. San Rafael: Barfield Press 1967, Philosophy and Rhetoric 7 (2):115-118 

Oxford (2025) Oxford dictionary, definition of the word ‘Pneuma’. Oxford University Press, online dictionary 2025. 

Barfield, O. (2006). The rediscovery of meaning: and other essays. San Rafael, Calif.: Barfield Press.

Brook, I (2005), Goethean observation as phenomenology, IEP 405: Phenomenology and Environment, AWAYMAVE - The Distance Mode of MA in Values and the Environment at Lancaster University. Viewed July 2025 from: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/users/philosophy/awaymave/405/wk8.htm 

Oliveros, P. (2005). Deep Listening : a composer’s sound practice. Bloomington, iUniverse. Published 8th March 2005

Krishnamurti, J. (1968) Commentaries on Living, Third Series. Theological Pub. House a Quest Book, Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 4, 1968 

Vygotsky L. S. (1934/1987). Thinking and speech. The collected works of Lev Vygotsky (Vol. 1). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

Carroll, L. (1984). Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. Puffin Classics, printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc, Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England 1984. 

Gebser, J (1986), Ever Present Origin, translated by Noel Barstad & Algis Mickunas - 1986 - Ohio University Press.

Vernon, M. Sheldrake, R. (2025). What is really known about consciousness? A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake & Mark Vernon. Accessed from Youtube, Mark Vernon Channel, July 2025 from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pvufK5X9p8